Dang, leftover half-of-a-porkchop! What the devil am I going to do with you? I am a modern conscientious meat eater, and therefore I feel bad throwing away any part of a noble animal that was sacrificed for my palate. Not only that, but since I try to buy sustainable, you’re freaking expensive– you might not be enough for a meal, but you’re still probably a couple of bucks worth of meat!

I guess I could chop you up and toss you in some rice or soup or something, but surely there’s something more interesting I could do with you– some way I could stretch you out over a few more meals. Wait a second… I know what we should do. We should turn you into a seasoning!

INSTANT UMAMI in a tiny glass bowl

This is a great trick that gives you a little something that adds instant umamito any dish. It’s especially nice if you’re trying to cut down on your meat intake and want to add a little meaty flavor to a dish. The nicest thing is that it contributes to the ethos of ‘waste-not, want-not’– it’s perfect for small-scale quantities of leftover meat that you might otherwise have thrown away.

Next time you make pork or beef* and you have just a little left over, either before or after a meal– grab your chop and slice it crosswise really thin– about 1/4 inch. When you’ve used the entire portion, you can dredge the individual pieces in seasonings, or just leave as-is, depending on your preference. I dredged mine in a mixture of 1 part sea salt, 3 parts chili powder.

Arrange your slices on an oiled rack on an oven pan of your choice, not touching:

Now, here’s the deal: what we’re trying to do is to dry these guys out, but not to the point where they turn into jerky. We want them to have the consistency of a dry hard cheese. What this means is that we’ll need to pay attention to the process and check frequently. This isn’t just something you can stick in the oven and walk away from, because it’ll be different for everybody depending on the initial done-ness of the cut, the seasonings you used, and the vagaries of your oven. This is one of those cases where being specific in the recipe instructions wouldn’t necessarily give you the desired results.

Here’s how I did it:

1. I did not preheat the oven. Once I’d prepped my pan, I placed it in the oven on the second-to-lowest rack and set the temperature to “low broil.” If you don’t have a “low broil” setting, you can probably get away with about 500 degrees.

2. I checked the meat every ten minutes.

3. Since the meat was in the oven as the temperature increased, it lost its liquid very slowly, and allowed me to adjust as needed until the meat was at the perfect consistency. It took about 45 minutes to get where I wanted it– again, about the moisture level of a nice, hard chunk of parmesan, with no charring. This is important.

Because, now that you’re done, you have these nice, hard little nuggets of meat, and you take your microplane grater (if you don’t have one, you’re crazy, but could use the fine side of any old cheese grater), and shred those nuggets down to a dust!

“Would you like some freshly grated pork with that?”

The nice thing is that, since you’ve come pretty close to dehydrating the cut, this stuff’ll last quite some time. You’ll be able to use it on salads, in soups, on rice, on pasta. It’s as spicy as you prefer, and adds a lovely undertone of savory umami to anything you add it to.

Best of all, it means not wasting any of that expensive meat you bought down at the farmer’s market. Sure, you could just buy bacon bits, but those are salty, expensive and overwhelming. You’ve already got a quarter of a cut of pork roast your kid didn’t finish, so why not use it all?

*Theoretically this could work with chicken or fish, but we haven’t tried it yet, so won’t recommend it.

3 days to go, 18 backers, $866 pledged! We still have $2134 to go– if you’ve been thinking of backing, now’s the time to do it.

And, of course, thanks a ZILLION to everyone who has backed so far! Regardless of whether we end up making the goal, we’ll be thanking our backers with a concrete prize of some kind (as yet to be determined…).

So, in an attempt to create the perfect vegetarian Country-style Sausage for Scotch Eggs, we came up with a product using bulgur wheat, black beans and powdered buttermilk that tasted almost exactly like the real thing:

I'm Vegetarian Sausage! SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS....

The problem: the binding agent, or lack thereof, caused the mixture to break down into crumbles. Although this is dandy for other recipes– dolmes, sausage casserole, and stuffed peppers come to mind– we really need something for Scotch eggs that will hold together well enough to wrap around a hardboiled egg.

The problem is that most binding agents come with their own flavors. Since this mixture tastes and feels almost perfect, we don’t want to alter the flavor or texture palate to a huge degree. We thought of a couple of possibilities.

– Regular wheat flour seems the obvious choice, but we’re concerned about how it might affect the flavor and texture.

– We could try some egg, but since the recipe is based on hardboiled eggs, we’re worried it’ll be too eggy.

We ransacked the pantry, and found a couple of items we thought might fit the bill: soy flour and gluten. We divided the remaining batter from the original batch and measured soy flour into one and gluten into the other. Since we’re still in the development stage, our measurements were fairly inexact; mixing was performed by hand and enough of each substance was added to better bind the batter (say that five times fast!).

The results of both were fairly underwhelming.

The soy flour gave the sausage a “green” flavor, like we’d mixed in edamame. Blech. It also didn’t hold together well enough. Better than the original batch, but not well enough to wrap around an egg.

The gluten held together wonderfully, but imparted its own flavor to the mix that almost overwhelmed the sausage-ness. In fact, the mix which included the gluten tasted almost exactly like the fake sausage brand we buy at the store. So, we know how they do that, but we’re trying to avoid the flavors of store-bought veggie sausage. Gluten won’t work.

Frustrating! But now’s not the time to quit, not when we’re close enough to taste that Scotch egg and its tangy intersection with HP sauce and our bellies. So, what next?

Next, we hit the grocery store again to procure a couple of other possible binding agents. A quick bit of research gives some possible clues. I’d like to try arrowroot starch– supposedly high on binding ability but low on flavor. Another thought is unflavored whey protein powder. (At this point, it’s beginning to feel like the Ingredients Playoffs.)

Of course, this will have to wait until we can afford to run out and buy some new ingredients, so it’ll likely be next week before we post the next installment. If you’ve been following along so far, thanks a mil! And, if you’d like to help support this project, check out Meat/No Meat: A Cookbook for the Biculinary, and maybe consider becoming a backer!

In our quest for the perfect vegetarian sausage, we decided that a base of bulgur wheat mixed with black beans should pretty closely approximate the “mouth feel” of ground pork sausage. So, to start our first test recipe, I decided to cook 1/2 cup of bulgur wheat and mix in a cup of black beans, which will give us enough of a base to stretch out through a couple of test sessions.

Every step in the process will eventually contribute to the final flavor. With this in mind, and because I’m not a fan of cooking grains in plain old water, I decided the wheat needed to be simmered *in* something. What might add an earthy, slightly bitter complexity to the grains? Vegetable broth would be too sweet, and not quite on the mark in the flavor category. How about…. coffee?

Sounds strange, right? But coffee has a nuttiness that I think just might work in the final product. So, one cup of brewed coffee and 1/2 cup of bulgur wheat into the pot, boil and then simmer for about 15 minutes, and step one is complete. Upon tasting the cooked grain, I did think the coffee flavor was a bit too strong, but a quick rinse under cold water in a mesh strainer mellowed the excess flavor.

To the mixing bowl! I added the black beans (canned) and, since we don’t have a food processor, smushed them into the wheat with a potato masher. Next, it was time for the Secret Ingredient:

"'Atsa good buttermilk!"

Although in the last post we thought we might try powdered milk as the binder, the store was out of it. They did, however, have this lovely canister of powdered *buttermilk*, featuring this handsome, red-cheeked chef of vaguely European mien. His charming smile all but called out to me in mock Italian: “Hey, you! Forget about powdered milk, try-a my powdered buttermilk, capice?” Why not give it a whirl? The sournesss of buttermilk might add something traditional vegetarian sausages miss, and anything with butter in the title can’t be that bad, right?

I added the buttermilk, measuring as I went, and it seemed to be working wonderfully. 1/4 cup did the trick. I then added a combination of other ingredients to approximate that inimitable sausage archetype. Since this is a test recipe, I’m not going to provide their exact measurements here, but I will tell you that I used soy sauce, sage, thyme, nutmeg, pepper and salt. A quick taste let me know I was on the right track.

The Mix, Mixed

Flavor seemed right. Consistency seemed right. So, it was time to toss some of this stuff into the old frying pan and see who saluted.

By the way, I do mean OLD frying pan. Wondering why we’re trying to raise some seed money to get this project started? It’s to replace equipment like this:

Help me! HELLLLLPPP MEEEEE.....

Since our eventual goal is something that will be deep-fried, we need to know that a) it won’t cook too unevenly in oil; b) it’ll hold together if wrapped around an egg; and c) it will taste delicious. To that end, I decided to make a few patties out of half of the mixture and fry ’em, leaving enough left over to muck with if the first batch didn’t work. I put about 1/4 cup of Canola oil* in the pan and turned that sucker up to 7.5 (out of 8). When it had a nice sizzle, I spooned in three patties of varying thicknesses and let ’em have it!

I'm Vegetarian Sausage! SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS....

As the mixture started cooking, it really began to develop a distinctly delicious sausage-like smell, a perfume you’d imagine wafting from the kitchen in a Southern grandma’s house at breakfast time. True fact: when Emily came into the kitchen, I asked her whether she thought it smelled like pork sausage. Her reply? “That’s not real sausage?” I was on to something.

Then it happened. Before my eyes, the lovely little patties I’d created began to break down into crumblies. I tried to hold them together, to retain their shapes as I inserted the spatula under each one. They simply weren’t holding together. Part of the problem was the condition of our little frying pan, to which even the oiliest ingredients will stick like evil glue. However, I believe that what was happening was that the buttermilk was breaking down and absorbing the liquid as the sausage cooked, losing its consistency and causing the patties to crumble.

Still, holding together is one small part of what we’re looking for from our sausage. more importantly, how did it taste? After it had browned, quite nicely, I used a slotted spoon to remove the sausage to a plate, and called in Emily for a test:

There is no meat in this picture

It is delicious!

The flavor, the mouth-feel, the texture, are almost exactly identical to country-style pork sausage. The ingredients as used, in the proportion they were used, were nearly perfect. It was slightly salty, so I’ll need to cut down on that just a bit, but otherwise it tastes closer to real pork sausage than any store-bought substitute I’ve ever tried. I sincerely doubt that a meat-eater would even be able to notice the difference if unaware. We mixed the crumbles into a tomato sauce and served over butternut squash ravioli, and oh my goodness, you guys! This stuff is REALLY, REALLY GOOD.

Still, it’s not quite ready. It just needs one more something that will help it stay together as it cooked. What would that something be? Tune in shortly for the exciting conclusion and find out!

Let’s say we’re interested in making a vegetarian version of Scotch Eggs, those delectably delightful staples of British Pub Food, hardboiled eggs wrapped in pork sausage and deep fried. We could always pick up a package of prefab vegetarian sausage substitute– Lightlife’s Gimmee Lean certainly fits the bill, even though it’s sticky and difficult to work with. However, in the interest of the Meat/No Meat philosophy, we want to figure out our own version.

So, let’s think about sausage. The kind we use is country style, which I suppose we could categorize as “plain sausage”: think Jimmy Dean, breakfast patties, salty, juicy goodness. (We don’t want anything too exotic at this point, since we’re just making the basic, so no chorizo (yet)). The best kind is, of course, fresh, purchased from a butcher shop or other purveyor of ground, spiced pork, especially since Jimmy Dean usually has copious amounts of MSG and nitrates, which many find categorically yucky. Typical sausage seasonings usually include sage, maybe some thyme, nutmeg, perhaps a couple of fennel seeds tossed in for good measure.

When we think about our vegetarian version of sausage, we want to compare it to the pork version. Pork sausage is slightly crumbly, moist, fatty, salty, juicy. It isn’t usually consistently textured; in with the ground meat we usually find little pockets of gristle and grease. This is a big difference between store-bought veggie sausage substitutes and the real thing. The kind we find in the store is often smooth and pasty.

For our version, we’ll need some kind of base. Since we want to come close to the texture of the real thing, we’d like to have at least two components to our base, a main ingredient and a secondary. We think crumbly, moist, so a grain of some kind– perhaps quinoa? It would do the trick, especially since once it’s cooked it can be mashed and has an interesting mouth feel. But alas, the store we visit is out of quinoa (only in Seattle) so we need some other possibility. Looking around, most of the other grains are too large to work. Amaranth is a possibility, but it’s kind of obscure, and would need to be ground further at home. We settle on cracked bulgur wheat, familiar to most people from tabouleh.

What about the second ingredient? We’ll want less of it, and it should be interestingly textured and readily mash-able. How about beans? Black beans have a nice, meaty flavor and would add some proteins to the mix, so we’ll go with a can of those.

Now we need something that, when mixed with liquid, will bind it all together. The problem with many of the usual binding agents– flour, for instance, is that they have a bad habit of drying out whatever you’re trying to cook. Since Scotch Eggs are deep fried, this is an even greater concern; we don’t want our sausage substitute to turn the egg into a crispy asteroid with a sandy interior. We need something that will help retain moisture.

We also want to add some kind of fat to the mixture. This could be oil, but we are going to fry them in oil, so we run the risk of a final product that’s too oily. It could, theoretically, be butter. We can try these as possibilities, but let’s explore other options and think outside of the box a little bit. What kind of binder could both hold our veggie sausage together and add a little fattiness and sweetness to our sausage? How about powdered milk? It’s sometimes added to pork sausage for the exact same purpose, so let’s give it a whirl!

Now we’ve got the basics for our first test batch of veggie sausage: bulgur wheat, black beans, powdered milk. We’ll use water and a little soy sauce as our liquid, since soy salt adds a little saltiness. For seasoning, we’ll use sage, thyme, savory, nutmeg, salt and pepper– traditional sausage spices. In the next installment, we’ll whip up our first test batch and see how it goes.

We are writing a cookbook for the Biculinary: Vegetarians and Non-Vegetarians, called “Meat/No Meat.” Instead of many vegetarian recipes, which simply substitute fake meat products for the meat found in standard concoctions, the recipes in Meat/No Meat are designed to duplicate the edible experience as closely as possible for both vegetarians and non-vegetarians alike. We won’t be using expensive, sometimes hard-to-find fake meat you need to buy at the store; instead, we will be creating tasty substitutes with ingredients found in most major supermarkets.

Alas, our kitchen equipment is sore lacking, so we are trying to raise $3,000 in seed money to help replace some old pots and pans, and to augment the food budget so we can perfect and refine the recipes. To that end, we’ve started a Kickstarter page where interested parties can back our project.

Help make our dream a reality– vegetarians and non-vegetarians can eat together at the same table at last!

On the left, collard greens made with salt pork. On the right, collard greens made with eggplant “salt pork.” Can you tell the difference?

This year, due to lack of the usual guests, my wife and I are taking a break from the bird and cassarole &tc. Instead, we’ll be making a couple of dishes from scratch that we’ve always wanted to make, but never have for whatever reason (timpano and cannoli, for those who are curious).

If you’re interested in eating a succulent and mouth-wateringly flavorful turkey this Thanksgiving, you should really consider brining that sucker! It’s very easy, and the payoff is high-quality bird that’s absolutely shockingly delicious.

Here’s how it’s done.

You’ll need:

One (organic, cornfed, free-range, of course) turkey, NOT self-basting or Kosher
Water
A turkey-sized container of some kind
Salt, and lots of it
Boullion cubes
12 tea bags (preferrably yerba mate’, but any dark green tea will work)
Various spices and sundries
Lots of room in your fridge
A cup of butter
A cheesecloth or clean, disposable towel

1. Make sure your turkey is clean and completely thawed!

2. The night before you’re going to cook your turkey, place the bird in a massive container, big enough that the turkey can be completely covered by the brine.

3. Begin boiling your water in a stock-pot. You can also use a number of smaller pots if they’re all you have on-hand.

4. When the water reaches boiling point, turn off the heat and begin adding salt to the water. You’re going for a ratio of about 3/4 of a cup per gallon of water. If you’d like to check whether the water is salty enough, drop in a raw egg (in the shell). Does the egg float? If so, you have plenty of salt in your brine.

5. Add your boullion cubes, about two per gallon of water. Add your teabags. Add whatever other spices you’d like to seep into your turkey. I like some rosemary, some sage, some pepper. Add enough spices that the brine gives off a heavenly aroma.

6. Turn off the brine and (this is important) LET IT COOL DOWN! If you’re in a hurry, you can drop some ice-cubes into the brine, or put your stock-pot in a sink full of ice, or stick it in the fridge, but it’s best to just let it sit and cool off, which takes a while. It has to cool off because you don’t want to start pre-cooking the bird!

7. When the brine is cooled to room temperature, pour it over your turkey. Cover it completely.

8. Let it sit, in the fridge, for 8-12 hours (but not too much longer or it’ll get too salty).

9. When it’s done brining, remove the turkey and wash it off. Discard the brine.

10. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees.

11. Melt the butter on low, and soak the cheesecloth or towel in the butter.

12. Stick about six garlic cloves underneath the skin of the turkey. Place the bird on the roaster, and cover it with the butter-soaked towel. DO NOT STUFF YOUR TURKEY. Cooking your stuffing in the turkey causes problems. It makes the cooking time all wonky and you run the risk of cold stuffing in a hot bird, which is just gross.

13. When the oven reaches 450, put the bird in for a half-hour. After the half hour, take out the bird and cover it *LOOSELY* with a sheet of aluminium foil. Reduce the heat to 325, and place the bird back in the oven.

14. Baste your bird frequently. Once every half hour should do fine– don’t do it too much or you’ll interrupt the cooking process. This sounds pretty frequent, but if you remember to baste it eash time you go into the kitchen to refill your wine glass, you should be okay.

15. (Optional) If you would like to put a mild glaze on your turkey, here’s a neat one. Mix together about 1/2 cup of honey and 1/4 cup of tamarind syrup with a couple of teaspoons of olive oil. Coat the turkey in glaze about 45 minutes before it comes out the oven. Glazing isn’t imperative, but it can add some extra crispiness to the turkey skin.

16. If you have a meat thermometer, remove the bird when it reads about 180 degrees in the leg joint. It should take anywhere from 3-6 hours depending on how big your bird is. You can estimate an hour for every three pounds or so. Another way to check for done-ness is to stick a fork in the thickest part of the turkey. Are the juices clear? Then your turkey is done!

I’ve always been on the fence regarding the MSG question. I know lots of people who claim to have bad reactions to it. E, in particular, has a nasty reaction to certain asian foods that we attribute to MSG (strangely, they’re usually Taiwanese, which makes me wonder if it’s some other ingredient peculiar to Taiwanese cooking). On the other hand, plenty of evidence (including the millions of Asian people who use it every day) seems to indicate that it’s not as bad for you as its reputation would indicate.

When you next grate parmesan cheese onto some dull spaghetti, what you will have done in essence is add a shed-load of glutamate to stimulate your tongue’s umami receptors, thus sending a message to the brain which signals (as one neuro-researcher puts it) ‘Joy and happiness!’ Supper is rescued – and your system has added some protein and fats to a meal that was all carbohydrate.

Ripe cheese is full of glutamate, as are tomatoes. Parmesan, with 1200mg per 100 grams, is the substance with more free glutamate in it than any other natural foodstuff on the planet. Almost all foods have some naturally occurring glutamate in them but the ones with most are obvious: ripe tomatoes, cured meats, dried mushrooms, soy sauce, Bovril and of course Worcester sauce, nam pla (with 950mg per 100g) and the other fermented fish sauces of Asia….

It’s not surprising that the MSG-makers are so busy on their product’s image, because MSG-phobia still shows no signs of subsiding. This despite the fact that every concerned public body that ever investigated it has given it a clean bill of health, including the EU, the United Nations food agencies (which in 1988 put MSG on the list of ‘safest food additives’), and the British, Japanese and Australian governments.

In fact, every government across the world that has a food licensing and testing system gives MSG – ‘at normal levels in the diet’ – the thumbs-up. The US Food and Drug Administration has three times, in 1958, 1991 and 1998, reviewed the evidence, tested the chemical and pronounced it ‘genuinely recognised as safe.

Of particular interest is the chart at the end, which I’ll duplicate here in full because it’s worth checking out. It’s a list of ingredients found in many processed foods that are actually MSG in disguise:

Me, I’m on the fence. I can’t imagine ever buying any for use in the kitchen, but since I don’t tend to get the “Chinese Restaurant Syndrome,” the question is more academic.

That said, I do keep a package of kombu on hand in the kitchen. I add a piece to rice while it’s cooking, or to any ‘one-pot’ stew or simmer, and the difference is notable. What’s really easy and fun is to make a kombu dashi (broth), which can be used as a base for miso soup, added to savory dishes that require liquid or deglazing, mixed in with rice, or used instead of water to steam vegetables.

Soak the kombu in the water for 30 minutes. Add the Mirin and the vinegar, and turn the heat up to medium high, but keep an eye on it. Right before the water starts to boil, turn off the heat and remove the kombu. Add the bonito flakes/shiitakes and simmer for an additional 10 minutes (or to taste). Strain the liquid, and you’re golden.

If you live near or have visited salt water, especially of the marshy variety found near intracoastal waterways, you’ve probably walked past a big ol’ stand of Salicornia, also known as sea bean, sea asparagus, glasswort, picklewort or samphire.

For those of us who don’t live immediately near a wild source, they can sometimes be found in specialty or Asian markets. If you live in Seattle, they can regularly be found during the summer at the “Foraged and Found” booths at almost every weekend Farmer’s Market (find yours here), for an incredibly reasonable $10.00/lb. I pick up 1/2 lb every other week or so, and it lasts me for a couple of dishes. Beats a four-hour drive to the likeliest nearby foraging spots.

These delightful little fellows come to the kitchen pre-seasoned. Since they grow so close to salt water, they’ve adapted to thrive on the stuff, and, for all intents and purposes, draw it up from the sand/soil. This lends the critters a fairly salty flavor, with definite overtones of minerals. They’re so salty that it’s a good idea to soak them for a while before using them in a recipe. Once soaked, they taste like string-bean pods or really tender asparagus like when it’s super-thin in Spring, and retain their crispiness if cooked.

The amazing thing about these guys is their perfect semi-salty versatility, especially considering the whole low-salt cuisine thing. If you cook with sea beans, you don’t need to add any salt to what you’re making! Properly soaked, 1/2 cup of sea beans contains about 70 mg of sodium, but the additional mineral content stretches that flavor and enhances the taste of whatever you’re making. All you need to do is add a few of them, finely minced, to any savory dish and they’ll add a delightful augmentation of flavor that precludes the need for any additional NaCl.

They’re really nice raw, in salads, but I prefer to cook them, either in small amounts as a salt replacement, or as a side dish, the same way I’d use asparagus. One good thing to do is to mix 1/4 cup sea beans with 1/4 cup sweet onions and cooked underneath a broiled steak seasoned with black pepper (no salt!); the juices from the steak seep down and cook the vegetables, and then cut the meat into bite-sized pieces so each fork-full of steak/sea beans/onions provides the perfect balance between umami/salty/sweet/tangy/juicy. Heck yeah!

Another good trick, especially nice on the grill, is to take some nice whitefish– cod, trout, catfish– and season it with a couple of twists of ground pepper, a squeeze of lemon, a pat of unsalted butter, and double-wrap it in foil with a 1/4 cup sea beans. Toss it on indirect heat for a good 15 minutes, take it off the heat, unwrap it and breathe in those amazing aromas. The littoral essences from the sea beans envelop the fish during the cooking process, bathing it in green, slightly briny delight. It is like eating cooked sashimi.

Finally, here’s a more formal version of a recipe I keep returning to every time I procure some of these guys. Note, once again, the lack of directly applied salt– the sea beans provide plenty. The actual recipe is super-easy to make, though it may require some wait-time while some of the ingredients soak.